Posted on June 8, 2018
Job Shadow
Every year in Planning 10 there is a big assignment every student has to do. For this assignment you have to contact someone with a job that you might like and shadow them for a day. We do this assignment to see what a day working is really like. People often think they know what they want to do but until you actually see what you need to do you don’t know if you’ll like it. We also have to contact the person and set everything up so it helps improve our organizational and people skills. The first thing we had to do was come up with a brainstorm and call list of possibilities for who we could job shadow. We have used a website called MyBluePrint where we did tests to figure out the jobs best suited for us to help us decide where to do our job shadow. 
I have always had an interest in working in law but I haven’t had any experience with it so I didn’t know if I really liked. I decided it would be a good job for me to shadow. The first thing I had to do was contact someone who works in that field and try and set up a day and time. I knew my uncles girlfriend works in a law firm so I contacted her and we set a date for May 25th. The law firm she works at is DLA Piper. She emailed me my plan for the day which involved meeting with many people with different jobs in a law firm. I then came up with a list of questions I could ask while I was there. 
I arrived at the building in the morning and because they deal with a lot of people’s personal information the first thing I had to do was sign a non-disclosure saying I would not share any information regarding their clients. Sadly this also meant that I was not allowed to take any photos or videos while I was there so I apologize for the lack of media. After that I got to talk with Megan McAllister who is the head of Human Resources. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her because I had never even considered a career in Human Resources but I am now very interested in it. She told me about the many things she has to do including the fun part such as bring people together to work on things, and the hard parts such as having difficult conversations with people about their work ethics.
After learning about Human Resources I got to talk to Kerry Sheppard who is the director of the student programs at DLA Piper. He organizes the program for law students to work at the firm so they can graduate. We talked a lot about the schooling you need to do to become a lawyer and there is a lot. First you have to major in anything before you can even apply to law school. You then have to go to school and also work at a law firm during school to graduate. It is about 8 years of schooling. After we were done talking, Kerry gave me a 25 paged pamphlet on how to become a lawyer which I have briefly skimmed through and it is very informative. He then took me to meet one of the law students working at the firm.
I got to spend a lot of time with Joyce, a law student at Thompson Rivers University. She took me on a walk to the court house and answered all of my questions on the way. She told me what she had to do to get into law school and what it’s like. There is a lot of reading so you have to be a fast reader. The court house was very cool. It looked similar to the court rooms you see on TV but they are a lot smaller. Most of the cases DLA Piper deals with are small so they aren’t as dramatic as they are on TV. Joyce told me that to be a good lawyer you have to be good with people. You have to have lots of empathy and be able to resolve conflicts.
Because I was unable to get any media while I was at the firm I have made a short back with the answers to the questions I got in my interviews.
The last thing we had to do was write a thank you letter to the people we shadowed. It just had to be a short letter to thank them for spending their time with you and organizing it. I only had one email so I sent it to her and asked her to tell everyone else I said thank you.
Spending the day at the law firm was a very unique experience. If I do want to get a job in a law firm I will have to improve my people skills and become a better reader. I will also have to do a lot more schooling and spend more time learning about law. I really liked how each day at a law firm is different so you aren’t stuck doing the same thing everyday. I didn’t really like how a lot of your job is spent behind a desk reading and writing. After talking to everyone I got a ton of answers to all of my questions but my favourite question was “what is the most rewarding part of your job”. Everyone answered the same which was helping people. Being a lawyer you get to help people with their problems and that is very rewarding. As of right now I am not sure if being a lawyer is the right job for me but I will defiantly consider it when I have to make a decision.